


Now & Then

by OllieoftheBeholder



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Moving On, Part & Parcel rewrite, Past Character Death, Post-Book 9: Crash & Burn, Road Trips, based on Abi's original plan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:15:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24700678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OllieoftheBeholder/pseuds/OllieoftheBeholder
Summary: On February 22, 2013, Nicholas Reilly O'Flaherty sacrifices himself to save his friends.Fifty-one days later, Kelly Abbott receives a package, postmarked Boston, containing the remains of two lives - and a task to be fulfilled. Following the directives laid out by Eli Sanchez - the first to leave them for good - Kelly and the remainder of Sidewinder, accompanied by Zane Garrett, set out on a road trip, hoping to heal long-fractured rifts and newly-formed scars...and maybe find a bit of peace in the end.
Relationships: Kelly Abbott/Nick O'Flaherty, Owen Johns/Riley Williams, Zane Garrett/Ty Grady
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Nobody dies onscreen. Throwing that up first thing.
> 
> This fic is based on Abigail Roux's original plan, which was for Nick to actually die at the end of Crash & Burn. She scrapped it because she said it didn't work with the book or the overall arc. I, however, am both extremely stubborn and fueled by angst and the tears of my readers, so I'm going to make it work, dammit. I hope you'll enjoy the journey with me.
> 
> I've put together a soundtrack for this fic. You can find it [here on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6XoZE26znVwQXQYwWgThmn?si=R9wyEWfpQbmJDc6-uFUo5A). It will probably be updated as the fic goes on to add songs that fit scenes that come up. Feel free to listen to it while you're reading to just add to the feels.

“Hey, Six,” Digger blurted.

Kelly looked up and couldn't help but grin, even though it hurt. Ty looked battered as hell, worse than he'd ever looked at the end of a mission when they were still in the service; he was leaning heavily on Owen's arm, a drip stand between them, and his other arm was in a sling. The hospital attire wasn't doing him any favors, but he was upright and alive and that was worth a hell of a lot.

Ty cast a quick glance at Owen, who said in a tired-sounding voice, “He says he's not our Six anymore.”

Kelly wanted to hug him, but guessed neither of them would appreciate that much. He might have been caught on the tail end of a hell of an explosion and had to be dug out of the rubble of a building— _again—_ but Ty had jumped out a window and into a swimming pool in the wake of said explosions, and he was very clearly not being discharged.

“How's Zane?” he asked, because there was no way in hell Ty didn't know. It might have been a coincidence that he and Digger had been assigned to the same room, but Ty and Zane were fucking _married_. Even if the staff had done something stupid like separate them, Ty would have been perfectly within his rights to ask.

Ty swallowed hard, and Kelly suddenly felt a twist in his stomach. No. _Fuck,_ no. Ty and Zane had _earned_ their happy-ever-after, goddammit, there was no way in hell it had ended like that.

“Sit,” he said, hearing the shift into corpsman mode in his voice as he indicated the chairs in the hallway. Ty shouldn't be standing anyway.

Ty sat, slowly, his knees shaking the whole way down. Owen followed him, so Digger and Kelly sat, too. Kelly was reaching for Ty's free hand to comfort him, to reassure him that however bad it looked, it would be okay, _Zane_ would be okay, he wouldn't have to go back to Baltimore alone, when Ty said, “Zane's going to be fine. He's awake, he's...he'll be fine. We talked. He knows...what happened.”

Kelly exhaled. “Thank _fuck,_ dude. The way you were acting, I thought you were gonna tell me he didn't make it.” He glanced from Owen to Ty and back. “I don't suppose either one of you knows where they're keeping Nick in this place? We were going to ask at the front desk, but hey, you're here.”

Owen's lips pressed tightly together. Ty swallowed again. “Doc, Nick...they're not keeping him here at all. He's...they sent him back to Boston already.”

Kelly stared at Ty. “What? No, no, that's not Nick. He wouldn't leave without saying goodbye to us. He wouldn't just go back to Boston. And, hell, there's no way he was in good enough shape to be discharged already.”

“Oh, hell, no,” Digger whispered from behind Kelly. Kelly glanced over his shoulder to see that Digger's eyes were wide with horror.

“What?” Kelly frowned at him, then turned back to Ty. “Grady, _what the fuck is going on?_ Why is Nick back in Boston?”

“His—” Ty's throat jumped as he swallowed. “His father...claimed him. Had him sent back there.” His fingers trembling, he reached out and gripped Kelly's hand lightly, not because he didn't want to hold it harder, Kelly could tell, just because that was as hard as he could manage. “Kelly...he didn't make it. He's gone.”

*~*~*~*~*

Nick didn't have a will, and even though he'd put Kelly in charge of his affairs once upon a time, his parents had stepped in the moment they'd been notified he was dead. Since he'd died intestate, all his possessions belonged to his parents, and they sure as hell weren't going to let Kelly have them.

Fuck them. Kelly didn't want to be Nick's sole heir, like they clearly thought he did. He didn't want to be Nick's heir at _all._ He'd wanted to live a thousand years with him and die side by side in the same bed on the same day. He'd wanted forever with _Nick_ , not forever with the memories.

So the last thing Kelly _ever_ expected was the Fed-Ex guy on his front porch with a box postmarked Boston.

Kelly signed for it automatically. He thought he might have said something to the delivery guy, but all he could hear was a buzzing in his head. He lugged the box inside and set it on his coffee table and stared at it, hard.

It had been a few weeks since Miami. Since they'd crawled out of the rubble of the Cartel's headquarters and been carried to the hospital. Kelly didn't know where the others were, if Ty or Zane had been discharged yet, if Owen and Digger had gone home, what was going on with the FBI agents who'd risked their lives and careers alongside them. He didn't care. He'd shut down as soon as Ty had whispered those words.

_He's gone._

He'd been distantly aware of Digger sobbing, of Ty apologizing over and over, of Owen anxiously asking if he needed a nurse, but he'd just gone blank. Completely shut down, refused to acknowledge anything that was going on. He'd pulled free of Ty's fingers and brushed off Digger's hand and walked out of the hospital without a backwards glance. He'd gotten a taxi and gone to the airport and flown straight to Boston and placed a single phone call before he'd even fully gotten out of the gate.

And when he'd seen Alan Hagan's face when he pulled up in front of the airport, he'd known it wasn't another one of Ty's lies.

He'd gone to the funeral, distantly surprised he hadn't missed it. He'd stood a little apart from Hagan and the others, _feeling_ separate. He remembered Nick's sisters singing “The Parting Glass,” a beautiful old Irish song, in four-part harmony. He remembered Kat breaking down and her oldest son, the one who'd come to the hospital a year before when Nick had donated part of his liver to the ungrateful bastard who called himself his father, stepping up and joining in in an uncertain boyish treble to sing farewell to the man who'd sacrificed so much for them all.

He'd stayed behind when the rest of the mourners left, staring at the mound of dirt covering the man he'd thought he would spend the rest of his life with, and he had felt _nothing._

A black limousine had pulled up and a door had opened and a hand had beckoned, and Kelly had stepped in mechanically. He'd probably talked to whoever was in the car, flat, monotone answers to questions posed, but he couldn't bring the face to mind, let alone the voice. He had no recollection of where the car had taken him, what had happened afterwards. _Anything_ could have happened, but he didn't remember and didn't really care. He was a blank slate from the minute he'd gotten into the car to the minute he'd walked in the front door of his cabin.

Ever since then, he'd been on autopilot.

He ate. What, he couldn't have said, but he ate, because he had to in order to live, and for some reason he had to keep doing that. He might have slept, but he also might have just gone into a trance state for a few hours at a time. He ignored his phone. He didn't open his laptop. His world shrank to his kitchen, his recliner, and the bathroom. He couldn't venture out of that circuit. There were traps waiting outside the circuit—memories impressed in odd corners, marks made by illicit encounters, things left behind. Nick was everywhere in the cabin, if Kelly let him be, and Kelly couldn't risk letting him be there because then he'd have to acknowledge that he _wasn't_ there, that he never would be again, and that Kelly hadn't said goodbye because he hadn't known there was a goodbye to be said.

And then the chiming of the bell indicating someone was coming up his drive had jerked him out of his trance. The only trouble was, it had jerked him in the wrong direction. He hadn't had visitors in ages, and the last one he'd had had been a government SUV with two Marines and one set of orders. He hesitated to call it a _flashback,_ except it kind of was, because for a minute, he'd pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the phantom pain of the bullet that had torn though his chest two years ago, and he'd prepared to get off his ass and scream that they weren't taking Nick away from him _again,_ that they couldn't send him back alone, that if Nick had to go back over there Kelly was damn well going to tuck himself into Nick's seabag and go with him.

Then he'd remembered, and he'd had a whole different kind of pain.

Now he sat in his living room, staring at the box. Reality was starting to reassert itself, and that _sucked,_ to put it mildly. It had been a hell of a lot easier when he'd stayed in his fog where pain couldn't touch him and he could forget Nick was dead. Admittedly, he had forgotten just about everything _else,_ too, but at least the pain of losing Nick was deadened.

He could ignore the box. He could hide it in the closet, go back to his pattern. Out of sight, out of mind.

_Except,_ his brain scoffed at him, _Nick's jacket is still in the closet. And so is that back-scratcher he made, the morning after you first got him to kiss you. You open that closet, and it's just as bad as opening anything else. Like this fucking box._

Kelly stared at the box. It was innocuous, and fairly heavy. He hadn't been able to guess at what might be inside it. The likelihood that it was anything of Nick's was slim to none. Unless Hagan had cleaned out Nick's desk and decided to send those personal items along to Kelly.

Well, since he'd never developed fucking X-ray vision, he was going to have to open the damned thing.

Taking a deep breath, Kelly worked his fingers under the tape sealing the box shut. It would've been easier to use a knife, but there were too many memories attached to the knife, and he could only take so much at a time. It took him way longer than necessary, but finally he'd stripped off the packing tape and laid open the box.

There was...a lot of stuff. It wasn't exactly crammed in haphazardly—in fact, it was tucked in very neatly—but it was stuffed to the brim, and Kelly couldn't tell what any of it was, except that there was a smaller, battered cardboard storage box in the center. On top of it was an envelope with his name written in neat, precise handwriting.

It wasn't Nick's handwriting, but Kelly pulled it out and opened it anyway. Inside was a letter written on folded sheets of paper torn off a yellow legal tablet. He held the letter close to his face—he didn't feel up to going upstairs for his glasses—and began to read.

_Dear Kelly,_

_I hope your address is still right—I found it in one of Nick's address books. If not, hopefully someone knows where to forward this to._

_I'm so sorry. Our parents had no right to do what they did. You and the rest of your team meant so much more to Nick than any of us did. Don't try to argue with me, it's true. As much as he loved the other girls and me, it wasn't anything near what he felt about your team. After all, we weren't the ones on his desk at work. And I know you meant more to him than anything. I know how he felt about you, what you two meant to each other. If anyone had the right to his things, you did. I was sure Nick would have written a will, at some point, but I haven't been able to find any indication that he did. Or if he did, it was never filed properly._

_Our father isn't expected to last much longer. At least Nick didn't have to face down all the inevitably condescending people telling him he did his best, gave him an extra year, whatever. But he's too sick to really argue with us, and our mother is busy dealing with all of that. (I won't tell you what she had to say about Nick, because it makes me too angry to even think about.) They gave Erin and me permission to go through the_ Fiddler _and take some things we might want, although they did give us a list of the sorts of things we weren't allowed to take._

_We did take a couple of things for ourselves, and I kept back a few things for Patrick. But what's in the box are things I—we—thought you and the rest of Nick's recon buddies might want. His pictures, the things he kept from when he was in the service, a few personal items. Erin packed some things in here that she thinks are yours—they're a little small for Nick, anyway. There was also a box we found tucked in a secret panel. It's labeled with someone's name, not Nick's, but I think I remember it being one of your team members. I don't know why Nick had it, but maybe you can figure it out._

_Let us know the next time you're in Boston, or at least on the East Coast. You'll always be welcome, at both Erin's house and mine. After all, if you weren't our brother yet, we all knew Nick intended to make you be._

_Love,_

_Katherine Finnegan_

Kelly stared at the last line of the letter for a long moment. His eyes were perfectly dry, but there was a suspicious lump in his throat that wouldn't go away. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he set the letter aside and reached into the box.

He had to pull the pictures out first. They were tightly packed around the box in the center, and he never would have been able to extract it if he hadn't, not without risking the glass breaking. Fleetingly, he thought of the devastation at Ty's row house after Nick's fight with Tanner's men, then pushed the thought out of his mind. He had to stay in the present or he wouldn't be able to get through this. To that end, he laid the pictures face-down on the coffee table without looking at them. He would. Eventually. Maybe. But right now, he just couldn't.

Underneath were, as Kat had said, some of Kelly's shirts that he'd left on the _Fiddler._ The way they were bundled, they were probably wrapped around things, knickknacks and tchotchkes and gewgaws and whatever else they'd found. Kelly ignored them. He could get the box out now, see what it was and why it was in there.

Then he saw the name printed on the top, and he gasped like he'd been punched in the stomach as all the emotions he'd tried to keep out came flooding in at once.

_SSGT ELIAS SANCHEZ._


	2. Chapter 2

Kelly took a shower, for the first time in weeks. It took a surprisingly long time, considering he hadn't really _done_ anything. When he stepped out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist, and padded into the bedroom, he stopped, staring at the room for a long minute.

In a weird way, it was both easier and harder to bear that he and Nick hadn't been together before they'd gotten tangled up in Ty's crap. He hadn't had to look at the sheets on the bed and know that the last time he'd slept in them, he'd been tangled up in Nick's arms, naked and raunchy and sore and deliriously happy. In fact, he'd changed them before he'd left, less because they'd needed it and more because he'd been anticipating coming back _with_ Nick—he'd figured they would deal with whatever it was Ty was dragging them to Baltimore about, say their goodbyes, and then they could go spend the rest of whatever vacation time Nick had managed to get in Colorado, even if just for a couple of days before he went back to Boston and finished closing out his life as a detective. Or maybe they would have gone back to Boston. Kelly hadn't really cared. He'd loved the adventure hike he'd been on, but he'd been looking forward to spending time with Nick.

At the same time...it was hard to look at the sheets and know they _didn't_ have Nick's scent on them. Or anything else of Nick's. And they never would again. Nick was gone, embalmed and boxed and buried six feet underground, just a few feet from where the man who'd made his life hell for almost forty years would shortly be buried, assuming you _could_ bury the devil in consecrated ground. Kelly had precious little of Nick to hold onto, and he'd stupidly assumed it wouldn't matter. They had the rest of their lives to spend together, after all, he'd accumulate plenty, especially once they'd both quit and joined Emma Grady and her band of adventuring wackos hunting cryptids.

He hadn't expected _his_ life to extend beyond _theirs._

He got dressed. The clothes felt odd dragging over his skin, and for half a second, Kelly wondered if he'd accidentally or unconsciously grabbed something of Nick's—but no, they fit him perfectly well. It was just that he'd been wearing the same thing since he'd left the hospital, the same basic outfit he'd shown up for the funeral in, and it felt weird wearing something different and _clean._

Kelly was feeling again. He didn't like it. He also didn't like that he apparently couldn't cry. He remembered Eli's funeral; they'd all clung to Nick, sobbing like babies. They'd all cried when they piled on one another on the _Fiddler,_ after Ty had finally broken down and apologized and, as he put it, forced Nick to love him again. They'd all cried when they'd been forced to leave Nick bleeding out in the street, praying someone would get to him in time.

But now Kelly _couldn't_ cry. He felt like his tear ducts were plugged solid. Even though he ached, even though he missed Nick like a phantom limb, worse than he had when he'd been deployed, he couldn't cry.

And God, he probably needed to.

Thoughts of Eli's funeral made him think of the box still sitting on his coffee table. He remembered Eli's mother handing it to Nick, sobbing as she did so. He remembered Nick accepting it solemnly, setting it aside. He'd asked once what was in it, but Nick had just shaken his head and changed the subject.

Suddenly, Kelly wondered if Nick had ever opened it.

He also wondered if _he_ was ready to open it.

His eyes strayed towards the end table. He'd picked up his cell phone only to discover that the battery was dead. So, much like he was forcing himself back to life—or maybe _being_ forced back to life, with the arrival of both Nick and Eli in his tiny little cabin—he'd plugged, first his phone, then his laptop in, giving both of them hopefully enough juice to actually turn on. He'd evidently been in the shower long enough that the little power bar was at one hundred percent, so he picked it up, disconnected the cord, and turned the phone on.

The first thing he noticed was the date, and shock rose to the top of the emotional soup roiling in him. He'd known it had been a while, or at least guessed as much by the surprising growth of facial hair. He just hadn't realized _how_ long it had been. It had been the end of February—he hadn't really thought much about the date—when they'd lost Nick.

According to his phone, it was presently the twelfth of April.

Kelly scrambled to unlock the phone, his heart suddenly pounding. Six weeks. He'd lost more than _six weeks_ of time to his damned fog. And he hadn't noticed the time passing. Six weeks of sitting in the dark, of surviving rather than living.

Six weeks without Nick...

It wasn't like they'd never been separated for any length of time, but that was different. Even then, Kelly'd known Nick was only a phone call or a plane ride away. He'd always known they'd see each other again soon. But now...now it was just Kelly and his memories and his photos and the videos he was pretty sure it'd be a while before he'd be able to watch. The idea of watching some of the things he and Nick had gotten up to, and knowing it wouldn't happen again, was physically painful.

It was hard to believe it had been that long. But then again, it was hard to believe it had _only_ been that long. And he had a lifetime ahead of him.

Kelly forced himself to quit dwelling, dammit. The whole point of this was that he was rejoining the real world, he needed to focus on something other than his loss. And the first thing he focused on were the notifications. There was a notification from voicemail that his inbox was full. There was also a notification that his text inbox was full.

He was tempted, for a moment, to simply erase everything in both. But he knew he still had a couple of voicemails from Nick, and more than a few texts. He couldn't bring himself to delete those. Even if he wasn't ready to look at or listen to them, he needed to know they were there.

He started with the voicemail. That was fairly easy. He didn't even have to let the messages load all the way to delete them, and since the ones from Nick were saved voicemails rather than new ones, he could just go through and systematically delete everything, once he'd heard who it was from and verified that it wasn't from a creditor, lawyer, or something work-related. None of them were. They were all from his boys. Kelly erased them unheard, then opened the texts.

Unsurprisingly, there were texts from Ty, from Digger, from Owen. There were even a few from Zane. Kelly deleted all of them. He hesitated over the Sidewinder group text, wondering if he could delete parts of it or if he should just delete the whole thing, then decided to keep it for now, on the grounds that somewhere in there were the remnants of Nick, even if it was a Nick he'd shared with the rest of the boys. He did, however, mark it as Read. In doing so, he saw that the last message in it had come from Owen. [ _Welfare check. Every last one of you assholes, Skype me as soon as you see this._ ]

The time stamp indicated it was several weeks old, probably right after Owen had made it back to California. They must have all realized the group text still contained Nick's number, and created a new one—Kelly was pretty sure he'd deleted some group messages, not that he'd been paying attention. Still, he figured it still applied to him.

He tucked his phone in his pocket—not that he'd really need it, but just in case—and went downstairs for his laptop. The green light indicated that it was fully charged, so he unplugged it and took it out to the porch.

The sun was shining, the trees were green, blossoms were popping up in the grass, and a light breeze was blowing, carrying the scent of pine and flowers. It was a perfect spring day, which didn't seem possible. Nick O'Flaherty was _dead._ How could the world have continued to turn on? How could the seasons keep changing, the snow melt, the flowers bloom? How could the sun still rise when the man who'd brought it into Kelly's life was gone forever?

Kelly was fairly certain he'd heard a country song like that at some point, but he wasn't going to look it up just then. There was only so much he was pretty sure he could take at once.

Luckily, his bills were on autopay, so he didn't have to worry about whether or not his internet was connected. He propped his feet up on the railing and started booting up the laptop, then reached for his pack of cigarettes, thinking the nicotine might calm him.

Then he remembered Nick in the bunkhouse at Zane's family's ranch, breaking his twenty-year streak, and froze, then slowly eased back to a sitting position. He had to look as normal as possible when he spoke to Owen. Over the phone would have been easier, it would have meant he could hide how he looked—he hadn't really looked in the mirror, but he was sure he looked a hot mess—but, well, that was probably why Owen had ordered everyone to Skype him instead.

Taking a deep breath, he clicked the icon, located Owen's name, and hit the CALL button. Only then did it occur to him to wonder what time it was in California, and whether or not this was really a good time.

It didn't ring very long, though, before Owen's face appeared before him. Kelly was accustomed to seeing him in jeans and a t-shirt, so seeing him in an expensive suit and tie would probably have been weird if Kelly was allowing himself to feel normal emotions like that. While he was feeling some, he wasn't feeling _normal._

Still, he gave normal his best shot anyway. “Hi, Johns.”

“Kelly.” Owen exhaled hard. “Thank Christ, Doc, I was about two days away from calling the police to make sure you weren't—” He caught himself.

It crossed Kelly's mind that he ought to apologize or something, but it probably wouldn't sound sincere, so he didn't bother. “I didn't realize it had been so long. I'm not interrupting or anything, am I?”

“I'm on my lunch break.” Owen waved at a bowl on his desk. “And even if I wasn't, I'd talk to you anyway.”

“You're back at work?” Kelly probably shouldn't have been surprised by that. Owen was the only one of Sidewinder who still _had_ a regular job, after all, and he'd taken a whole bunch of time off to deal with Ty's shit. He probably needed to go back.

Owen winced. “They offered to let me take the rest of the year off. With pay. But...I told them I'd try coming back into the office for a while. Keeps my mind occupied. Sort of.” His expression softened. “How are you doing? We've been worried sick about you.”

Kelly didn't know what to do with that. Or how to answer. “I'm...here.”

“Yeah,” Owen said slowly. “You're there. Is that where you went from the hospital? Back to Colorado? Digger and I couldn't get out the door after you fast enough.”

“No, I went to Boston.” He hadn't left the hospital with a conscious thought on his mind, just gone on autopilot, but by the time he'd landed he'd realized why he'd gone there. “I had to prove to myself Ty wasn't lying.”

“Doc,” Owen said softly.

“No, that's—I didn't mean it like that.” Or maybe he had. Kelly honestly wasn't sure. He thought he was over that—mostly—but at the same time, maybe there'd been a little bit of _what's one more lie to you, Tyler_ in the back of his mind. “I just...wondered if maybe Nick had told Ty to say he was dead, or told the hospital to say it, and gone back to Boston so we wouldn't have to see him like that. Or if his fucking asshole father had had him moved back and told the hospital to tell us he was dead. I don't know. But his partner picked me up from the airport and...we pretty much went straight to the funeral.”

“At least you were there,” Owen murmured. “At least one of us was.”

They all should have been, Kelly reflected, and damn Nick's parents for not seeing that, or caring. His mind flashed to the box on his living room table. When he didn't say anything, Owen cleared his throat and added, “Everybody else made it back okay. Ty was the last one discharged, but they got back to Baltimore a few weeks ago.”

Kelly assumed Owen meant that Ty was the last member of Sidewinder; after all, he'd been up and moving three days after jumping out a goddamned window, whereas Zane had still been in bed. “What are they doing about what's left of the bookstore?” he asked, not because he had any serious interest but because it felt like something he ought to ask.

“Rebuilding it, and apparently it's going well. Garrett says they'd ideally like to be open by the first of June, but he's iffy on whether they'll be fully ready by then. Something about distribution rights from one of the publishers he's reached out to.”

“Wait, you've talked to _Zane?_ ” Kelly asked, actually startled by that. Owen had had the most issues when he'd found out that not one, but _three_ of his Recon brothers were bisexual, and he and Zane definitely hadn't gotten along at first. To find out that Owen was actually speaking, specifically, to Zane was something that six months ago would've had Kelly dramatically falling out of his chair. As it was, it at least got him to raise his eyebrows.

Owen apparently misinterpreted Kelly's surprise. “Ty's...he's not always up for talking. Garrett—Zane—he's been good about keeping us in the loop with what's going on, especially when Ty can't. And he made sure to reach out to all of us when...well, you saw the group text.”

Kelly decided not to mention that he hadn't actually read it. “Yeah. But the bookstore thing, that wasn't in the group text.” He hoped.

Thankfully, Owen shook his head. “No, he called yesterday. They got a lot of books about espionage and code-breaking and he offered to set any aside I might want. Gotta say, that surprised me—him remembering I was into that stuff, let alone asking. He's a surprisingly good guy.”

“Not that big of a surprise,” Kelly muttered.

“Yeah, I know. He's good for Six, that's for damn sure.” Owen's eyes took on that worried look again. “You should call them, once we're done here. They're worrying about you, too. So's Digger. We've all been trying to get in touch with you.”

“I know. I wasn't ready.” Kelly hesitated. “Not sure I'm up for calling anybody else today. But, hey, it's good to see you again.”

“Yeah, you really sound like you believe that,” Owen mumbled. Before Kelly could react, he said, a little louder, “It's good to see you again, too. Hear from you, all that. Seriously, what have you been up to?”

“Nothing, really,” Kelly answered. He took in the pinched, puzzled look on Owen's face and clarified, “No, literally. I've just been...sitting around existing.”

“Do you—I can be out there in a day or two,” Owen offered. “If you need someone.”

“I'm fine,” Kelly lied. “Thanks, babe, but I'm handling it. And you're busy, right? Work and all that.”

“I can—” Owen stopped himself. “Okay, but call if you need someone, got it, Doc? Me, or one of the others. We'll all be there in a heartbeat. Should you need us.”

Kelly was at least sixty percent sure that was a reference to something. “Thanks, Johns. I appreciate that.”

“That's what we're here for.”

*~*~*~*~*

Kelly eventually caved and had the cigarette. It calmed his nerves, or at least that was what he told himself as he stared at the woods from his deck.

He'd built the cabin himself, with his own two hands and a very dedicated earth mover, following their discharge from the military. Over the last ten years, he'd seen sunrise after sunrise and sunset after sunset from there. He'd basked in the summer sun and frolicked in the snow like a little kid. He loved his cabin, he loved the little town he'd chosen, and he loved the camp he'd worked at since he'd discovered it was there.

But now, staring at the view, he felt...lost. It didn't feel like home anymore, and he wasn't quite sure why. Kelly hadn't felt so adrift since...well, since they'd been sent back. Since the morning he'd woken up in a hotel room, tangled in a pile with the rest of his boys, hungover and terribly confused. Half of them had thought they were still in Afghanistan, the other half remembered being in Washington, D.C., and all of them had been in a damn near panic when Kelly'd spotted the Empire State Building on the skyline. He remembered the way he'd felt when it sunk in what had happened, that they'd ripped him away from the only purpose he'd had since his parents died—simultaneously like his stomach was filled with lead and like he was a helium balloon, loose and untethered and blowing in the breeze.

They'd gone on a road trip, after they'd gotten back. It had started out as them all being drunk off their asses and not knowing how they'd gotten from D.C. to NYC, then devolved into an impulse of _we've got the money, we've got the time, why the hell not use it?_ They'd thrown their seabags into the back of Ty's Bronco and driven off to see the parts of the country that didn't have Marine Corps bases. It had been a great trip, Kelly remembered. Lots of fun, lots of laughter. Memories he still treasured. But it had been the end of Sidewinder. They'd gotten together again after that, but it hadn't been the same. They'd had lives that didn't involve one another after that.

And Kelly had been the one to start it. He'd been the one to decide to move here. They'd dropped him off and, like when you pull out a single thread from a shirt and the whole thing falls apart, one by one Sidewinder had separated. Owen to San Diego, Digger back to the bayou, Ty and Eli to D.C. and the FBI, and Nick going to Boston alone.

Did they still blame Kelly for that, he wondered? Had Nick, even after everything they'd done, everything they'd become in the past two years, still died blaming Kelly for breaking the team? It would serve him right if he had, and honestly, it was fair enough, because Kelly sure as hell blamed himself.

He thought, suddenly, about the box on the table. It was from Eli, not Nick, but still, it was one of his boys. Maybe if he opened it, he'd find some of the answers he was looking for. Or maybe he'd find closure. He wasn't sure he'd ever really gotten over Eli's death, either, although he hadn't been half as close to him as Nick had.

Taking a deep breath, Kelly stubbed out what was left of his cigarette and headed back inside.

The box still sat where he'd left it, surrounded by framed pictures and next to the other box. For half a second, Kelly was tempted to unwrap his shirts from whatever Nick's sisters had set aside for him—for them—and put off looking at the box a little longer, but he realized the pain of losing Nick was still way too raw, and if he didn't want to completely fall apart, he needed to skip that for now.

He sat down, pulled the cardboard storage box towards himself, and lifted the lid.

Sitting on the very top of the box was a familiar face Kelly'd never thought he would see again—a one-eyed sock monkey with a Purple Heart patch sewn onto his beanie.

Kelly's hands shook a little as he lifted out Seymour, who they'd joked more than once was the mysterious seventh member of Sidewinder. Eli had loved him, often stuffing the monkey into a pocket or his pack on any mission he'd gone on. Once upon a time he'd had white, orange, and green stripes, with tiny puffball buttons down his front, but the colors were faded and the buttons were long gone. He'd taken a piece of shrapnel to the eye, which had saved Eli's ass, and Eli'd ordered the patch for him so that everyone would know he was a combat veteran.

The monkey had gone everywhere with them. They'd taken pictures of him at important landmarks around the world, not always legally, and if Kelly was honest with himself, he'd figured Eli's mother would have put Seymour in the coffin with him, inasmuch as he'd thought about it at all. To see him in the box she'd given Nick was jarring, to say the least. Then again, maybe Eli had wanted Seymour to keep traveling the world, seeing all the—

Oh, God. It hit Kelly all of a sudden why Eli had always been so insistent on taking the monkey everywhere with him and taking pictures of him in front of exotic locations. Seymour had to _see more._

Eli and his goddamned puns. If Ty didn't know about it yet, he would groan himself into next week when Kelly told him.

The fond smile beginning to cross Kelly's face died immediately when he saw what was underneath Seymour. An oversized manila envelope, stuffed to the brim with something, took up the entire top of the box. A smaller envelope was taped to the outside, Nick's name scrawled across it in a handwriting Kelly'd almost forgotten.

Carefully, Kelly set Seymour on the couch next to him and picked up the envelope. The small outer envelope evidently had something else inside it. It took a bit of patience for Kelly to pry it open, especially since he was still avoiding using a knife, but he managed it.

He hesitated for a split second before pulling out the letter. Technically, it wasn't addressed to him, it was addressed to Nick. But he and Nick hadn't had many secrets, not up until the end anyway, and Kelly was trying very hard not to think about that right now. If Nick had ever opened this letter—and it was oh-so-obvious he hadn't—then whatever was in it, he'd have called Kelly and told him about it right away.

Taking another deep, steadying breath, he unfolded the letter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** This chapter has a flashback/nightmare combo that mentions several incidents from the books, including Nick's death scene in Miami. It's not super detailed, but if you're upset by things like blood, bullets, or car crashes, the mention is coming up.
> 
> I'm not going to be reposting every letter Eli wrote, necessarily, just one or two important ones. In this case, since I'm already going AU a bit, I'm assuming that Eli did write a new version of the first letter, which is what you're getting here. Have fun.

_Nick O -_

_If you're reading this, I guess that means I kicked it. I always figured your ass would go out before mine, go down in some blaze of glory shit, but—well. This is version 2.0 of this letter, and by now I've figured out that whatever the fuck you're doing in Boston, it's a hell of a lot less exciting and dangerous than what I'm doing, so maybe not. Still, I finally beat you to something._

_I'm writing this in a cafe at Dulles. Hell, you probably remember this—I just put your ass back on a plane because you've got work in the morning and you can't hang around here any longer (seriously, bro, one of these days I'm going introduce you to him). You spent the last couple days hanging out with me, swapping stories about the old days, making me laugh even though I shouldn't with a cracked rib._

_I love you, brother. I don't tell you that nearly often enough. God knows I've tried over the last couple years, but I also know I don't really succeed all that well. I keep thinking about how goddamn pure your friendship is, and I love you._

_The first time I wrote this, we were all scattered and separated, and I was the only one of us in regular contact with more than one other person. Now...well, I deluded myself for a while into thinking we were getting better. Grady reached out to you and you've been talking again. Doc started inviting us to come to his cabin. Johns has been a little better about keeping in touch. And I'm pretty sure whatever Digger's doing isn't completely illegal right now._

_But I know now I was lying to myself. Just 'cause the sharp edges have worn down with time doesn't mean we ain't still broken._

_It breaks my fucking heart. All those people tried to destroy Sidewinder, and it was us that took it down in the end. I've been saying I'm going to fix it for the last few years, since you came to visit me in the hospital that time. That I'm going to fix you._

_I've tried. God knows I've tried. But I haven't found the right way to do it yet, so I'm going to keep trying._

_But since I'm still planning to write a new one of these every couple of years, I guess I still died pretty young, huh? Thirty ain't all that old, and we skipped past it a couple years ago, but if we're not fucking ninety and escaped from the old folks' home to run away on the_ Fiddler _'cause I forgot to write new ones, then I still died too damn young._

_Maybe I never could fix it._

_I know what it'd do to me if I lost one of you this soon. We're supposed to get old and ride off in the sunset on the_ Fiddler _together. But you and me, we've got something the others don't have. You're fucking special to me. Losing you would hit me harder than losing any of the others, and I need you to know that. I don't care if you tell the others. Hell, they probably know it. I'm tearing up just thinking about it, and I swear to God if you put me through that, I'm going to resurrect you just to beat your ass._

_The first time I wrote this letter, I laid odds you went out with me. Back to back, brother to brother, just like we always promised. But now...well, now I know better. I'm not dragging you into this shit, Nick. It ain't fair. So I still don't know how I died for sure, but I'm betting you don't know the details and nobody will tell you. ~~Or you just haven't asked the right person.~~_

_If you're having to read this, I'm sorry. I know you're hurting. And I know you're hurting worse because you don't have anyone to lean on, because even though we're not all scattered anymore, we're still too far apart. So in the words of my best friend, Nick fucking O'Flaherty, “I'm going to do you a favor, son, and you're going to love me for it.”_

*~*~*~*~*

Kelly woke up screaming.

He bolted upright, sheets tangled around his waist, and turned on instinct to reach for Nick. A split second later, his brain reminded him of something he'd told Nick the morning after he'd kissed him for the first time—that he'd never woken screaming when he slept beside Nick, even before they'd been involved. Nick wasn't there.

A moment later, he remembered why.

Kelly drew his knees up to his chest and hugged them, burying his face in them and trying to get his breathing and heart rate under control. It was hard, though, with all the emotions rushing through him, bouncing off his plugged tear ducts. Even in the privacy of his own room, after the worst nightmare he'd had in ages, he still couldn't cry.

He'd been dreaming about...he wasn't sure exactly what. A lot of things had been confused in his mind. A snarl of battered and broken cars in an intersection of paths in the middle of a historic cemetery in the middle of a desert, people shouting and screaming, things blowing up and fires burning and bullets flying, the men around him wavering in and out of uniform, faces that belonged and faces that didn't, not that he was sure who belonged to what. He wasn't sure where he was, or even _when_ he was.

But in the center of it all was Nick. Nick, strong and beautiful in the heat of battle, his cheeks stained with soot and blood, a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. Kelly'd started to run towards him, but he'd fallen, brought down by someone's arms around his waist. He didn't remember shouting, maybe he hadn't, but Nick had looked towards him just the same. He'd dropped his weapons and run towards him, arms outstretched.

And then—

Kelly pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to get the memory of the dream out of his mind. A sniper's bullet had gone through his brain at the same time a shadowy figure had jammed a knife that was practically a sword into his side at the same time as a fearsome and mighty explosion, and Kelly had been trapped, tangled up in whatever had pulled him down, helpless to do anything but watch as the love of his life was torn to pieces right in front of him.

He'd failed Nick.

They'd _all_ failed Nick.

Kelly threw off the covers and swung out of bed. His throat was raw, like he'd been gargling broken glass, and he needed something to drink. Beer would be a bad fucking idea, and he was pretty sure he didn't have any milk, or if he did, it had probably gone sour, but there was a box of herbal teabags in one of the cupboards. He'd heat up some water and sip it slowly and maybe it would help soothe his throat and settle his stomach.

Twenty minutes later, he sat in his living room, all the lights still off, curled up in his recliner and staring out the window, even though there was nothing to see. It was better than staring directly at the box of things still spread out on the coffee table. Besides, the shadows of the trees moving in the wind gave him a better focus for his thoughts.

He remembered more about the dream now, realized he'd been pulling from all the times he'd almost lost Nick—the chopper crash, New Orleans, and then Miami—and combining them into a single hellscape. They'd all been there. Owen and Digger had been fighting back to back, neither of them looking as though it was particularly difficult for them; they hadn't really been in any danger. Ty'd been there, too, completely unarmed and defenseless, but he had been ignoring all the chaos around him, his arms wrapped around Zane, who'd just held him, and the two of them had been completely untouched by what was happening. It was like they stood in a magical fucking bubble where nothing bad could happen to them and it didn't matter what went on around them. Liam Bell had been laughing gleefully as he fought off a crowd like some kind of goddamn action hero, while Julian Cross stood over a fallen blond body shooting indiscriminately at anything that came close. Most of the faces that weren't his boys had been shadowy, indistinct figures, flitting in and out of the background, more recognizable for the weapons they held than anything else, but Richard Burns had loomed over the whole thing like a colossus, tugging a thousand near-invisible strings to stir the chaos and laughing. Kelly kind of thought that might have been what tripped him, in his dream, was getting tangled up in a mess of those strings.

But Nick...Nick had been alone. Alone and ignored. The only one in real danger, the only one hurt, refusing to bow under the weight of what he was doing. And he'd died by throwing away his means of defense and running to save Kelly.

They'd _all_ failed him.

Kelly inhaled the fragrant tea, wishing the chamomile would calm him. He wasn't sure if it was the dream itself or what it obviously symbolized that had rattled him so badly. He wasn't a psychiatrist, and he didn't really want to talk to one, but he recognized enough about his psyche to realize that he was _angry_. He wasn't sure who with. The Cartel? Richard Burns? Ty for getting them involved in this shit in the first place?

All of the above and then some, he decided. Fuck it. Kelly had plenty of anger to go around. If he was in the mood to be a little more rational, he'd admit that it wasn't _strictly speaking_ Ty's fault; he'd been manipulated as much as the rest of them, maybe a little more. For as smart as he was, Ty was shockingly easy to con into doing something stupid or dangerous or downright illegal, something every member of Sidewinder had taken advantage of at least once for shits and giggles. Burns had played on Ty's loyalty, to his father and to his country, and it wasn't Ty's fault he'd fallen for it. Mostly. But at two in the morning following a nightmare, Kelly wasn't in the mood to be forgiving.

Especially since Ty had come out of all this shit with the man he loved still at his side.

Involuntarily, Kelly's eyes strayed back to the stuff on the table. He'd only read the first page of Eli's letter to Nick before being too overcome to continue, still raw from his conversation with Owen. And maybe reading the rest of it wasn't such a good idea now, considering he was still upset from his nightmare. But at the same time, maybe it would be easier to read in the dark.

He took the packet back upstairs with him.

Setting the tea on his nightstand, Kelly fished out the wire-rimmed reading glasses he'd worn for the last couple of years and settled them on his nose. He started to crawl back into bed, then stopped. Carefully setting the glasses aside, he went over to the dresser and rummaged around until he found what he was looking for—one of Nick's t-shirts, which he'd left behind the last time he'd been at the cabin. It had been laundered since then, probably, but it was still Nick's. Kelly slipped it on over his head.

Only then did he climb into his bed, cocoon himself in his blankets, replace the glasses, and pull out the letter to see how Eli had intended to fix Nick.

*~*~*~*~*

_I have instructions for you, and you're going to follow them like a good little Marine or I'll haunt your Irish ass. Step one is to finish reading this letter so you don't fuck up any of the other steps._

_I may be dead, but I'm going to force you boys to love each other again. And it starts right here, right now. So grab your boots, take a week off work, and prepare to be loved from beyond the grave._

_Do you remember the trip we took after we were discharged? Of all the things we did together, of all the times we had, that trip was my favorite. It's the time I remember in the dark, when the dreams get too sad and the scars hurt too much. I still hang onto that, out of every memory we've ever made, then or since. Because it's the best parts of the memories of the best times of our lives._

_I've seen everyone since we started getting back together, or pretending to, and I can see we've all forgotten how fucking good we were, and we all need to remember that. Together. So that's why this letter still exists. Because you boys need to remember Sidewinder the way I remember us. The way we were when we threw our seabags in the back of Ty's Bronco and set off across the country without a care in the world but one another and zero idea of what we were doing._

_Step number two won't be easy, but that's why I'm giving this task to you, Rico. If anyone can do it, you can. You have to call each of the other guys and tell them to meet you at my gravestone. Without telling them why. So buck up, buttercup, this might get tricky._

*~*~*~*~*

It should go without saying, Kelly thought, staring at his phone, that he was _not_ Nick fucking O'Flaherty. Leaving apart the fact that Nick was dead, there was no way Kelly could do this, not as easily as Nick would have.

He'd spent two days trying to figure out how the fuck he was going to place these calls. Whether or not he actually wanted to, or if he wanted to just open all the envelopes he'd found in the bigger envelope and see what the fuck was going on. Spoil the surprise. Nick was _dead,_ Sidewinder was irreparably broken and twisted and torn apart, and it wasn't like Eli could fix them _now._

But something held him back. Kelly didn't know what it was, exactly, but he found himself wanting to try. Wondering if, maybe if they did what Eli said, if they fixed Sidewinder as best they could, it would fix the gaping hole in his heart.

He'd start with Ty, he decided, flipping to his contacts. That would be the hardest. If he could get through a conversation with Ty without breaking his phone, and if he could convince Ty to show up at Eli's grave, no questions asked, he could handle Digger and Owen. Taking a deep breath, he hit CALL.

Ty picked up on the second ring. “Grady.”

Kelly took another deep breath. “Hey, Six, it's me.”

“Doc?” Ty's voice cracked. “Jesus, it's good to hear from you. Owen said he'd talked to you, but...how are you doing?”

“I'm...doing.” Kelly waved a hand even though Ty couldn't see him. His chest felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. “How are you? How's the bookstore?”

“The bookstore,” Ty echoed. “It's...coming together. Couple snags, but...we'll be ready to open in a month or so. Maybe. Probably.”

“Are you doing the work yourselves?” Kelly asked.

Ty hesitated. “No, why?”

“Could you take some time off?”

“Absolutely,” Ty replied immediately. “You need us to come out there?”

The _us_ about killed Kelly, but he forced the emotion back ruthlessly. “Not here. D.C. In a week. Meet me at Eli's grave. Can you do that, Ty?”

There was a short pause, during which Kelly reflected that he'd probably sounded a little accusatory but couldn't bring himself to apologize. “Of course. We'll meet you there. Are you going to be okay in the meantime?”

“I'll be fine,” Kelly said, and wondered just how true it was. “See you in a week, then.”

“See you, Doc,” Ty said softly. “Take care of yourself.”

Kelly ended the call without saying anything further. He'd made it, but he wasn't sure if he could make it any further. And Ty hadn't even asked why, he'd just agreed to show up. He flipped to his contacts and selected Digger's number next.

“Hello?” Digger's greeting wasn't as enthusiastic and over-the-top as Kelly was used to, but that was fair, he wasn't himself either.

“Digger? It's Doc. How are you?”

“Doc!” Ah. Now _that_ sounded more like the Digger Kelly knew. He had to hold the phone away from his ear for a second, wincing. “Healing up okay?”

Kelly honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd noticed any bruises or abrasions, and wondered when during his fog they'd gone away. “Yeah, I'm good. How are you?”

“Hell of a lot better. Ditched the cane three weeks ago, and I'm up and mobile again.” Digger paused, like he might be considering saying something else. “Whatcha up to?”

Kelly tried to smile. “That's for me to know and you to find out. Want to go on an adventure?”

“An adventure?” Digger sounded surprised. “Hell, yeah, baby. Where we goin'?”

“D.C. I'll explain when we get there. A week from today. Meet up at Eli's grave.”

This time the pause was long enough to be noticeable. “Yeah, okay. Hey, where you at right now?”

Kelly tried to say _home_ but found, to his surprise, that the word was stuck in his throat. Instead, he said, “Colorado, why?”

Another long pause, which probably would have worried Kelly if he hadn't started trying to throttle back the emotions again. “No reason. Eli's grave, one week. I'll be there with bells on.”

“Good. Looking forward to it. Talk to you later, Digger.”

“Later, gator.”

There. Two down, one to go. Surely Owen would be the easiest, since Kelly'd already blown down that door. Carefully, he picked up the phone once more and called. It didn't ring more than once before Owen picked up. “Johns here.”

“Hey, Ozone, it's Doc,” Kelly said. It made it a little easier, using the nicknames. A little more like old times. “You busy?”

“Hey, Doc.” Owen sounded surprised and pleased. “No, I was just getting ready for a meeting, but I've got time. What's up? You still hanging in there?”

“Yeah, mostly.” Kelly hesitated, but Eli's letter had been explicit: he couldn't tell the boys why they were gathering. “Listen...you know the other day when you asked if I needed anything?”

“Yeah. I could tell you weren't—” Owen caught himself. “What do you need?”

“You. Well, all of you, but I've already got the others on board. Can you meet me at Eli's grave, a week from today?” Kelly made a mental note to book his plane ticket and email everyone with a _time_ to meet once he had it. Eli'd written a packing list, anyway, so he'd have to send them that.

God, they were going to think he'd lost his fucking mind.

“At Eli's grave?” Owen repeated. “What's this all about?”

“Can't tell you that,” Kelly said. Suddenly he wondered if this was going to be as easy as he'd thought. “Just need you to meet me there. Bring your girl if you want.” He remembered Owen talking about her on their drive to the ranch, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember her name.

Owen took a deep breath. From the sounds at the other end of the line, Kelly guessed he had his phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder, likely fixing his tie for that meeting he'd been talking about. He braced himself to be interrogated further, but Owen said only, “You got it, Doc. What time?”

“I'll email you details in a bit. Thanks, Johns.”

“Doc, if it means getting to see for myself how you're doing, I'll fucking walk to Washington. See you next week. Call me if anything changes.”

“I will,” Kelly said, trying not to think about Owen's last statement. “Good luck with the meeting.”

He ended the call and exhaled, sitting back and staring out the window without really seeing it. He was kind of surprised, actually, that they'd all been on board with it, now that he really thought about it. Owen had always been the one who preferred clear-cut objectives and goals. He'd always hated open-ended missions or walking into situations totally blind. And Ty—probably understandably—hadn't handled finding out that his creepy pseudo-uncle had been using him to do his dirty work well. Between that and the fact that the last time they'd manipulated him into going somewhere for fun, it had not only almost gotten all of them killed but almost cost him his relationship with Zane, Kelly really would have expected him to at least ask a couple questions. Digger, that was a given. Offer him the chance to shoot something or blow something up, and he was yours for the weekend.

There were a couple possibilities. One was that all of them were desperate for contact with one another, desperate enough that they'd respond to the vaguest of summons. Another was that they were hoping Kelly was going to surprise them by producing Nick, alive and well and smirking at the trick he'd played on them, even if that wasn't Nick's style. God, Kelly wished that was what he was planning to do.

Instead, he thought, stomach twisting unpleasantly, they were going to have _two_ ghosts tagging along on this damn trip with them.

Owen's last comment kept resonating in his head, though. _If it means getting to see for myself how you're doing, I'll fucking walk to Washington._ All right, so Kelly had probably done a good job of worrying them. He'd walked out of the hospital without a word to them, then spent the next almost seven weeks ignoring calls and texts and emails. And he knew he wasn't giving away much when he talked to them. About himself or his current mental state, such as it was.

It was possible—even probable—that the whole reason everyone had come onboard immediately was because it was Kelly asking, and under the circumstances, they wouldn't refuse him anything. He was trying not to think like that, though, because he didn't want to think about why.

They _should_ refuse him. Or at least question him. Kelly had poor impulse control, about anything from animals to high-risk activities; he'd done everything from bring home a pair of kittens that had reached the end of their stay at the shelter they'd been volunteering at to getting halfway to swimming with a colony of wild hippos before Nick stepped in and stopped him. They should probably be expecting that they were going to be dragged over Niagara Falls in barrels, or off on a Forrest Gump-style cross-country run, or naked scuba-diving in the Dead Sea. At the very least, they should be a little concerned. It would be normal.

Normal, clearly, was never going to happen again.

With a deep sigh, Kelly pushed himself up and headed to grab his laptop and the last page of the first letter. Maybe once they saw the packing list, they'd start asking questions. Even if they didn't ask him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I mentioned last chapter, but it bears reiterating: I'm most likely NOT going to retype most of Eli's letters. One or two, possibly, if it's crucial to the scene that it be read or seen, but most of the time, I'll just be implying what's in them.

More times than he could count in the past five years, Ty had been incredibly thankful for Zane's presence at his side or back. His partner-lover-husband could be exasperating, sometimes irritating, but even when he'd been at his angriest he'd been Ty's anchor, a calm and steadying presence that kept Ty grounded, held him up when he was too weak to stand on his own, and gave him something to believe in. Once Ty had allowed himself to lean on Zane, physically and emotionally, he'd found he was capable of things he never would have been able to handle otherwise.

Never, however, had he been more thankful for Zane than as they picked their way across the lawn of Arlington National Cemetery towards a too-small group.

They were the last to arrive, something Ty had to remind himself of when he momentarily thought _no, wait, Irish isn't here yet_. Owen and Digger stood awkwardly about, watching as Kelly dug around in a bag for something. Ty hesitated, studying Kelly. He was stiff, his face nearly expressionless, moving in a mechanical fashion. Something in Ty's chest twisted unpleasantly as he realized that all the passion and bounce and sparkle—everything that made him _Kelly—_ was missing. He looked worse than he'd looked the first time they saw one another after he'd moved to Colorado. He almost didn't look human anymore.

Digger glanced over his shoulder and noticed them first. A grin split his face, maybe not as big as normal, but at least he looked genuinely pleased to see them. He met them halfway from the path and caught Ty up in a tight hug, making him grunt as he actually lifted him off the ground. Once he let go, he turned and gave Zane the exact same kind of hug. Ty almost laughed at the look that flashed through Zane's eyes, but to his credit, he did hug Digger back.

Owen came over to them, too. He'd never really been a hugger, except for a brief, manly clap on the back if someone else hugged him first, but he held out his hand to Ty, back first, for that weird mix of handshake and arm-wrestling it had taken the others ages to figure out was Owen's version of an embrace. “Six, looking good. How are you feeling?”

Ty shrugged, trying to smile. “'Bout as well as you might expect.”

“I meant with the...” Owen gestured vaguely. “You're good?”

“Would I be here if I wasn't?”

Owen's eyes cut over to Kelly, who was still ignoring them. “Yes?”

“Okay, fair point,” Ty conceded. “You think Garrett would have let me come if I wasn't?”

“Maybe.”

“He's good, Johns,” Zane assured Owen quietly. “Promise.”

Owen actually relaxed, and even offered Zane a small smile as he reached out to give him the same handclasp. The relief Ty felt at that was astronomical. Nick and Zane had had a rocky start to their relationship, but Owen had been a downright asshole, and Zane hadn't exactly made a good impression on him in New Orleans. They'd worked together just fine during the whole crap with the Cartel, but Ty'd wondered if that had been just a temporary detente while their lives were in danger. Thankfully, they seemed to be getting along well now.

“Good to see you again,” Owen said, actually sounding sincere.

“Likewise. I brought those books for you, by the way. They're in the Mustang.”

They all rejoined Kelly at Eli's grave. Kelly evidently hadn't found what he was looking for; he was kneeling on the ground, digging through his bag and muttering under his breath, still ignoring Ty and Zane's approach. Ty wondered if he'd even noticed them.

He turned his attention momentarily to the stone. Eli's mother had opted for the Catholic cross rather than the simple Latin one, and she'd chosen not to include a commemorative statement, evidently preferring to let his record speak for itself. Then again, Eli'd been awarded so many medals there probably wasn't _room_ for anything like “Beloved Son”. It was the dates, though, that brought the lump to Ty's throat. Not just the fact that Eli'd died too damn young. The last date.

The next day would have been Eli's thirty-ninth birthday.

The others—or at least two of the others—had brought flowers, one arrangement bright orange and the other white. Ty reached into his pocket, knelt down, and pressed one of the emblems from the Bronco gently into the ground at the base of the stone. He rose back up, with only a little difficulty, and looked up to find Zane giving him that fond, understanding smile of his. Ty managed a smile back, then stepped over to his husband's side and turned back to Kelly.

He stopped himself, barely, from sliding his arm around Zane's waist. It wouldn't be fair to Kelly, not just then. But oh, did he want to. Maybe just having Zane nearby would be enough.

Kelly finally found what he was looking for and stood up. In one hand, he held a stack of papers; in the other, he held an envelope. A breeze ruffled his hair and rattled the papers, but he didn't let go.

“Last week, I got a box of Nick's things in the mail from one of his sisters,” he said without preamble.

Ty flinched. It hadn't occurred to him until literally that moment that Kelly hadn't been in charge of cleaning out the _Fiddler,_ or that someone else would have to send him things he might want. He felt Zane's hand brush discreetly against his lower back and leaned into it slightly. Yeah, this wasn't going to be easy. At all.

Kelly didn't seem to notice anyone else's reaction, or really to have one of his own. “One of the things she sent me was a box of Eli's things. I think his mom gave it to Nick after the funeral, but I also don't think Nick ever opened it. I went into it to see what was in it, and, well, I found this bunch of letters. They're addressed to Nick, but—”

He broke off, and for just a moment, Ty saw a crack in his facade. He started to take a step forward, but before he could, Kelly rallied and continued in the same level, controlled voice as before. “I only opened the one in front, but that's because we're supposed to open the rest together, at specific times. Here, if you want to see it, Eli explains it better than I can.”

He held out the letter. Owen took it from him and started to read it out loud, but he didn't get any farther than Nick's name before his voice caught and he pressed his lips together tightly, reading it to himself. Ty leaned over his shoulder to see and was peripherally aware of both Zane and Digger doing the same.

It got harder and harder to breathe as he went. More than anyone else there, even than Zane, Ty knew what Eli had been up to, what he'd been reluctant to drag Nick into. And Ty felt horrible because he'd never hesitated to ask, and Nick had never hesitated to answer. He also hadn't realized just how broken they were. God bless Eli for seeing it, and trying to fix it—something Ty never had.

He wondered how many things would have been different if Nick had tried to do this right after Eli's death.

Slowly, he raised his head to look at Kelly, who was still watching them nearly impassively. It was Digger, however, who spoke, his voice shaking a little. “So what do we do now?”

“Now that we're all together, we open the letter.” Kelly looked around at all of them. “Is everyone in?”

“EZ's speaking to us, man.” Digger didn't voice what all of them were probably thinking: _So is Nick._ “I'm listening.”

“Me, too,” Owen and Ty said together. Zane nodded.

Kelly nodded, too, and folded the letter back up. “Before we do that, though, one more thing.” He reached into his pack and pulled out something Ty'd honestly never thought he would see again—Eli's beloved sock monkey. Holding it up, Kelly said, “Seymour needs to see more.”

It took a split second for that to catch up to Ty's brain, but once it did, he groaned from the depths of his soul, at the same time Digger smacked his forehead and said, “Damn!”

Owen started laughing, almost doubling over as he did so. Kelly's lips twitched, just briefly, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he started fussing with Seymour. Ty stepped forward to help him, and they arranged the monkey so he could sit on Eli's stone without assistance.

Behind them, he heard Zane say quietly, “What are they doing?”

“That's Eli's,” Owen replied, his voice just as low. “We took pictures of him at special places and important landmarks all over the world. Doesn't get any more special than this.”

Ty stepped back and joined them, and this time, he let himself slide his arm around Zane's waist as Kelly snapped the picture.

*~*~*~*~*

They wound up in the exit row for the flight to Denver, all five of them sitting straight across in a line. It was a bit of a surprise to Kelly, until he realized that first class was mostly full and Owen had probably picked these seats out of consideration for Zane, whose long legs wouldn't fit comfortably in a regular airline seat. Actually, Owen and Ty would probably have been a bit uncomfortable too.

He dug around for his seatbelt and accidentally jostled Digger with his elbow. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“It's all good.” Digger shifted to give Kelly more room. “You just fly up this morning?”

Kelly wondered why he was asking, why it mattered. “Yeah. Didn't you?”

“Nah, got in last night. Train wouldn't have got me here in time today.”

“You took the train?” Owen asked, leaning forward to see across Kelly. “I didn't know it went to the bayou.”

“It doesn't. I, uh, I kinda flew up to Boston this weekend,” Digger confessed. “Just...felt like I oughta see, you know?”

Kelly tensed, but he didn't say anything. Owen swallowed twice before he spoke. “How is it?”

“Dunno,” Digger whispered. “I didn't make it that far.”

Owen reached over and squeezed Digger's hand. “We can all go together later, maybe. None of us ever made it to Eli's grave alone at first, either.”

“Yeah, true.” Digger turned his head and grinned. “Aww, isn't that the cutest shit you've ever seen?”

Kelly turned to look and immediately wished he hadn't. Ty had tucked himself into Zane's side, his head resting in the crook of his neck, and to all appearances he'd fallen asleep already. The plane hadn't even fucking pulled away from the gate, let alone left the tarmac, and Ty was already sleeping like a baby. Zane had one arm wrapped around him, the other resting loosely in his lap.

“Must've had a long drive this morning,” Owen mumbled. His brow was furrowed slightly, but Kelly didn't feel up to calling him on his bullshit. It was like Ty with respect to Kelly and Nick's relationship. He'd been fine with them dating, being in love, all that shit, it was just the idea of them fucking that made him freak out.

The thought sent a flare of pain through Kelly. Not just the reminder that Nick was gone and he'd lost the love of his life, but the thought of the sex. Sex with Nick had taught Kelly a lot of things about himself that he hadn't...well, that wasn't true, he had to admit. He'd always known he was _interested_ in things, but he'd never had the opportunity to try them, let alone discover if he liked them. With Nick, he'd been able to experiment a lot more—Nick was into some surprisingly kinky shit, too—but he'd also always known he was safe. And if they did something he didn't like, or something Nick didn't like, they'd agreed to never do it again and that was that.

Maybe it was a good thing Eli had imposed a hard-and-fast ban on sex on this trip. Not that Kelly necessarily _wanted_ to go out and fuck or be fucked, but, well, they were going to be heading through Vegas, and it wasn't without the realm of possibility that he'd have gone to check out a club or something to get his mind off of things.

It probably wouldn't have worked, though.

“You think Eli knew?” Digger asked suddenly.

Owen and Kelly both turned to him in confusion, although Kelly wasn't sure it showed on his face. Digger gestured vaguely across the aisle. “About Nick being bi. Or Ty, for that matter. You think that's what he meant by that 'him' he was gonna introduce Nick to?”

Kelly's stomach twisted unpleasantly at the idea of Eli introducing Nick to someone with the idea of setting them up. Owen, however, was nodding slowly. “He might have guessed, maybe, but I don't think Nick would have told him outright. Six, though, I doubt it. Bastard always plays everything so close to the chest.” That last was said with a bit of a fond grumble, the way he used to call Digger a menace to society when they all lived in Jacksonville together.

“Doesn't mean Eli didn't guess. Smart. He was smart.” Digger's voice faded away, and he turned to look out the window as—finally—the plane began taxiing away from the gate.

Kelly settled back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest. Well, if Ty was going to sleep, he would, too. God only knew what they'd have to do after they got to Denver.

*~*~*~*~*

It took them about ten seconds to agree that Nick wouldn't have lasted much longer before ranting about the statue at baggage claim. Digger even did an impression of his complaints that had everyone but Kelly snickering.

Zane was worried about Kelly. He'd expected to be, from the minute Owen had broken the news that Nick hadn't made it. He'd experienced that loss before, and he knew what it felt like, in a way that—thankfully—the others didn't. Ty sort of understood, but he'd gotten Zane back. And as much as he loved Nick, it wasn't the same. He'd expected Kelly to rage, especially at Ty and maybe at Zane, since in a lot of ways they'd been indirectly responsible for Nick's death. He'd expected him to be visibly upset, maybe occasionally to laugh and then feel guilty for doing it.

But Zane hadn't expected the _blankness._ Kelly Abbott was nothing if not extreme with his emotions. Anger, gaiety, fear, love—he did them all fully and to the utmost. To see him hiding behind the same emotionless mask Zane had seen on his mother, that he'd once worn himself, was almost terrifying.

He almost felt guilty about showing affection to Ty around Kelly, and he knew Ty felt the same. But at the same time, they'd come too damn close to losing one another, _again._ They both needed the physical contact sometimes, to reassure themselves that they were both there and alive and in one piece, more or less. That, and Ty wasn't back to one hundred percent by any means. He was at least in the upper nineties, which was one of the reasons Zane hadn't argued with him about coming on this trip, but he wasn't completely well, which was the main reason Zane had insisted on coming as well. Not that Ty had argued with him. In fact, he'd seemed relieved.

They rode the shuttle to the car rentals, more or less in silence, and when they arrived, Zane left the four members of Sidewinder to look at the next letter while he joined the line for the rental counter. As he moved closer, he contemplated his options. They needed enough room for five men, their assorted luggage, probably an equal amount of emotional baggage, and one very bossy letter-writing ghost. Possibly two.

When he got to the head of the line, he requested a Chevy Suburban.

He glanced over at the group. Owen happened to make eye contact with him, and Zane jerked his head, indicating he should come over, then went back to the forms the lady at the counter had pushed at him. After a couple of moments, he became aware of Owen's presence at his shoulder.

“Everyone who's driving needs to fill out the paperwork,” he explained without looking up.

Owen grunted, reaching for his wallet. “Don't put Digger on that shit,” he cautioned. “Or Doc.”

“Noted,” Zane said with a nod.

Owen glanced over his shoulder briefly. “I'd say 'or Ty', but that'd leave just you and me to do all the driving.”

Zane snorted. “That, and he'd knife me in my sleep.” He made eye contact with Ty, smiled briefly, and waved for him to come over. “You forget, I've been on long road trips with him before. He really needs to drive some of the time at least.”

“When's the last time? Besides...” Owen gestured vaguely at Zane's face.

Zane understood, barely resisting the urge to touch the newest scar curving across his cheek. “Apart from the periodic treks to visit family? Case where we tried to bring in Julian Cross the first time.”

“You two will have to tell that story later. Bet it's a good one.”

“You have no idea.” Zane would've expressed surprise that Ty hadn't ever told Owen, but then again, it had happened during the year they weren't talking. And there'd been a hell of a lot going on since then, to put it mildly.

Ty came over and put his license on the counter without being told, but then, he'd rented a fair few cars in his time. “We've got a problem,” he mumbled. “Hurry up. One of you needs to figure out what the fuck to do.” Without another word, he sloped off.

Zane and Owen exchanged worried glances.

They rejoined the group a few minutes later, keys and paperwork in hand, to find Digger and Ty staring at Eli's letter and Kelly staring at nothing in particular. Owen reached for the letter. “What's the problem?”

“Eli wants Nick to do all the driving every other day,” Kelly said flatly. “No one else is allowed behind the wheel.”

Owen blinked. “Oh.”

“So what the fuck do we do?” Digger asked. “I mean, without doing the whole _Weekend at Bernie's_ thing.”

Kelly leveled a glare at him, which at least beat the blank stare of the rest of the day. “Not funny, dude.”

Ty rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Seems like we've got two choices,” he said, accepting his license back from Zane and tucking it into his wallet. “Either we skip that part of the instructions, on the grounds that it doesn't make any goddamn sense anyway, or we just...don't travel every other day.”

Zane bit the inside of his cheek to keep from commenting, but somehow, he didn't think either option was the correct one. Eli had to have had his reasons, and he was pretty sure he meant every other day that they were on the road, not just calendar days.

So what, as Digger had said, the fuck did they do?

He felt something in his side, like someone had elbowed him, but when he looked, there was nobody near enough. He started to tune into the discussion—it couldn't really be called an argument—when he felt it again, sharper this time. A distinct prod. There was still nobody there, though.

And then he got it.

“What if I stood in?” he asked. Four pairs of eyes turned on him. “For Nick. I know I'm not...but I'm also not you four. Would that work, you think?”

The four remaining members of Sidewinder looked at one another. Zane didn't say anything—ultimately, it was their call—but he knew, in his heart of hearts, it was the right answer.

“That could work,” Owen said finally.

Digger nodded. “I'm good with it.”

Kelly didn't say anything, just got to his feet and hefted his bag onto his shoulder, then headed to the door. Ty slipped his hand in Zane's as he stood up. “Guess that's unanimous.”

Zane gave Ty's fingers a gentle, comforting squeeze. “Guess so.”

*~*~*~*~*

They probably could have let down the third seat, but nobody even made the suggestion. Kelly found himself sitting in the middle between Owen and Digger, just like he had on the plane, while they threw their luggage into the backseat. Zane murmured to himself as he got familiar with the layout of the car, while Ty began pulling up the GPS on his phone.

“Are we going to try to get all the way to Yellowstone tonight?” Owen asked.

Zane shrugged. “We'll see how we're feeling later, but probably not. We've done a hell of a lot of traveling today already. What's halfway?”

“Probably Jackson Hole,” Ty said, frowning at his phone. “I think. Seems like it's the closest to midway.”

“Who picks the music?” Kelly asked, more to pretend he was contributing to the conversation than because he actually cared.

“Not you,” Owen said immediately, and then bit his lip.

Digger laughed. “That's cold, man.”

Zane held up his phone. “Why don't I just put Pandora on shuffle?”

Nobody objected, so Zane set up the music app, then plugged his phone into the car's speakers before pulling out of the garage and hitting the road.

“Yellowstone,” Digger mused. “Seriously?”

Zane glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “What's wrong with Yellowstone? I've always wanted to go.”

“Nothing, it's great,” Ty assured him. “On this road trip Eli's having us retrace, we spent a few days camping out there.”

“Yeah, and a pack of bored teenagers followed us around for three days straight,” Owen said.

Zane grinned. “I imagine y'all were quite the hormone bait ten years ago. You were all, what, twenty-six to twenty-eight at the time?”

At one time, Kelly would have made a flippant comment to the effect of _are you saying we're not still hormone bait?_ But he couldn't bring himself to be that lighthearted. Also, he thought, glancing at the other men in the car, they _weren't._ For the first time, they were all showing their age. And they weren't even that old; Zane was the only one in the car who was past forty, and he somehow managed to make it look good. But they all wore the last few years—especially the last few months—on their skin. They weren't as resilient as they'd been when they'd been active duty.

And Kelly _felt_ old. It was hard to believe he was only thirty-seven—no, thirty-eight, he'd just had his birthday about a month before. He'd missed it in his weird fugue state. Probably some of the texts he'd deleted had been birthday wishes. Still, he felt at least twice that. Certainly not like someone who would attract a teenager, let alone be able to satisfy one, not that he would have. Even ten years ago when they'd gone on this trip initially, he wouldn't have done that. They'd vetted everyone thoroughly before even flirting back.

“How long did this trip last, anyway?” Zane asked. “The first time, I mean.”

There was a long silence while everyone tried to do the mental math. Finally, Ty said slowly, “I guess that depends on when you stopped counting. Nick went back to Boston in...April sometime. Before the Marathon, I remember that, 'cause Eli asked me if I wanted to go see it before we started the FBI Academy and I about took his head off. It was late that year, I think.”

“The twenty-first,” Zane murmured. He shrugged when Ty shot him a look. “It's always the third Monday in April.”

“And you just...happen to have the 2003 calendar memorized.”

“No, but the first was a Tuesday.”

Digger already had his phone out. He scowled at the screen, then up at Zane. “How'd you do that, man?”

The corners of Zane's mouth turned up. “Give me any date, I can tell you what day of the week it is.”

“All right, when's Christmas this year?” Digger challenged.

“C'mon, make it a hard one, huh?”

“Christmas first.”

“It's a Wednesday,” Zane said instantly.

Digger blinked at his phone. “Son of a bitch.”

“Someone give me another one. Come on. Any date, past or future.”

Ty drummed his fingers on his lap for a minute. “June twelfth, 1996.”

Kelly realized that was the day they'd signed the lease on the Jacksonville house at the same moment that Zane said, “Also a Wednesday.”

“What the _fuck,_ ” Digger yelped. Zane's smirk broadened.

“November tenth, 1775,” Owen offered. Birthday of the Corps, Kelly reflected.

“A Friday,” Zane replied with barely a second's hesitation.

“Is this some kind of twisted revenge for the mile marker thing?” Ty asked in a low growl.

“Now why would I do something like that?”

Ty muttered under his breath. Zane actually laughed. The sound grated oddly across Kelly's nerves and he felt the need to lash out, to hurt someone. To hurt _Zane._

The words were out before he thought about them. “When was your wife born?”

Ty flinched. Even Owen and Digger looked uncomfortable. Zane, however, didn't bat an eyelash or register any change in expression. “Becky? Thirteenth of August, 1967. A Sunday.”

He didn't sound—or look—upset at the memory, and Kelly got even more irrationally angry at that. Zane had fucking _married_ the woman, shouldn't just mentioning her name hurt? Let alone the day she was born? Even if he was married to Ty now, the memory of her still ought to be a painful one.

After a moment of charged silence, Zane's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror as he made a lane change. “We got off-topic. How long was this trip? Nick went back to Boston in April...”

“If you count that as the _end_ end, then five months, give or take,” Owen said. “But Kelly peeled off mid-February. I think he decided he was going to leave on Valentine's Day, and we dropped him off in Colorado...”

“Three days later,” Digger said. “The seventeenth.”

“A Monday,” Zane replied unhesitatingly.

“Six, your husband fucking weighs the same as a goddamned duck.”

Zane laughed again, and then all of them were laughing. Everyone but Kelly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're not already in the C&R server, and you get the reference, you get a cookie.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I forgot to update last week. I'm trying to be on a kind of a schedule (those of you who've ever tried to follow my McKirk fics know how well _that_ usually works out for me, but I'm trying), and when I realized it was Wednesday and I hadn't posted...I decided to just wait until this week. Hope it's worth the wait.

“I can't fucking believe this. It's a Motel _Six._ It's not even a goddamned Motel Eight. Shit, Eli, what the fuck are you dragging us into?”

Owen had been ranting pretty much since they read Eli's letter instructing them where to spend the night. Kelly had mostly tuned him out. It would have been funny if Nick had been there, but at the moment, just about everything was irritating the hell out of him.

They'd eaten. Well, they'd stopped at a restaurant and ordered food, but Kelly'd mostly picked at his. He wasn't really hungry. Nobody had argued with him, or even really seemed to notice; they'd talked more or less as though he wasn't there. But then again, that had sort of been the pattern ever since he'd lashed out at Zane, however indirectly, when they'd first been starting out.

He hadn't...well, that was a lie. He _had_ meant to hurt Zane. He just wasn't entirely sure why. His presence was an irritant, but it was only to Kelly, he could tell. And, hell, it wasn't fair that he'd offered to let Owen bring Riley—she hadn't been able to get off work—and was upset with Ty for bringing Zane. Maybe it was because he knew Owen probably wouldn't have brought Riley. Or maybe it was because he'd seen Ty and Zane together. Owen and Riley's relationship hadn't survived the kind of shitstorms Ty and Zane's had, and more to the point, they hadn't crawled out of the rubble of three buildings together, leaving Nick behind to bleed out in an intersection.

Never mind that they'd _all_ left him. Never mind that Ty had sobbed hysterically when he'd told them—told Kelly—that he'd left him. Never mind that Nick had _made_ them leave him there. Kelly had a huge, gaping, Nick-shaped hole in his heart and an emptiness beside him.

They'd been Marines, fighting together through unimaginable hell, and they'd always known there was a possibility one of them would die. They'd even anticipated that it would be sacrificing themselves for the others. And deep down, Kelly had always known that if there was going to be one of them doing the idiot thing, it would be Nick. But Zane had never been part of that equation, and something in Kelly's brain had decided he was the variable, the reason Nick had _actually_ died. And now he was on this road trip with them, _filling in_ for Nick, doing the driving where Nick couldn't. It wasn't fair.

“So,” he said, breaking into Owen's rant and not caring. “Think we can spring for three rooms without breaking the bank?”

“Is that really in the...spirit of things?” Ty asked, a little hesitantly. “We usually just did two rooms. Especially on this trip.”

“Like it'd make that much of a difference to you,” Kelly said. Ty took a step back, like Kelly had slapped him, and bumped into Zane, who ran a hand down his arm gently but didn't say anything. It only made Kelly angrier.

Digger stared vacantly across the lobby of the run-down hotel. “I think we should just get one.”

All four of the others looked at him. “Why's that?” Zane finally asked.

Digger shrugged. “'Cause it's what we did after we dropped Doc off.”

Kelly blinked. Owen nodded slowly. “That night would've been his turn to have a bed to himself, so...there wasn't much point in getting two double beds for us.”

“And Nick wasn't taking it well,” Ty murmured. “He didn't...he took it harder than the rest of us, that the team was starting to break up.”

“So we all got one room,” Digger concluded. “Piled on the bed together. Was easier than admitting we were missing someone.”

Kelly didn't want to say anything. He didn't _want_ to let go of his anger, or his irritation. But he found himself saying, almost reluctantly, “We did the same thing after Eli's funeral.”

Zane nodded. “Sounds logical to me. One room it is.”

There turned out to be a single room with a king-sized bed available, and when they arrived, it ended up being what Kelly assumed was a honeymoon suite. Ty and Zane took one look at it, looked at each other, and started laughing—that half-amused, half-embarrassed, this-isn't-really-all-that-funny-but-I-can't-stop kind of laugh.

“What?” Owen said, voice full of dread.

Ty waved a hand, but didn't seem able to answer, and it was Zane who said, “We stayed in a room like this one night when we were trying to haul Cross's ass to D.C.”

“You never did tell that story.” Owen looked around the suite and found a place to set down his bag. “I'd like to hear it.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Digger said, dropping his bag next to Owen's. “Since, you know, I got in trouble for that shit.”

Kelly moved a little more slowly, and he was aware that he was, consciously or unconsciously, traveling on the periphery, at least at first. He'd heard bits and pieces of the story before—Nick had told him all about how he got the holes on his boat—but never the whole thing. Zane and Ty told it well, spinning out the story skillfully, and although Kelly clenched his teeth so hard he almost broke something when Ty described the phone call where Richard Burns had insisted he knew Cross from before, by the time they fought their way out of the airport and made their way to Gettysburg, he had joined the circle, listening intently to the story. He was even starting to enjoy it.

“Dude,” Owen said, laughing. “You outed yourselves to the criminals?”

“That's what I said!” Ty cried, waving his hands about. “We managed to go all those months without anyone knowing, and then you just...blurted it out in front of an international assassin and his puppy dog of a boyfriend.”

“Well, in my defense, I'd only admitted I loved you a few days before that,” Zane pointed out. “So that part was still kind of new. And...I was scared. In case you haven't figured it out by now, when I get scared, I get angry, and when I get angry, I do some _really_ stupid shit. Outing us in front of our prisoners was honestly the least unintelligent thing I could have done. At least I didn't hurt anybody.”

Ty's expression softened, and Kelly could practically see the bar in New Orleans reflected in his eyes. He reached over and squeezed Zane's fingers gently. Zane squeezed back, lacing their fingers together, and they seemed to have an entire conversation in the five seconds before they broke eye contact and resumed their story.

But Kelly noticed they didn't let go of one another's hands.

It actually made him laugh when Ty described trying to dismantle Cross's trap and Cameron being the only one smart enough to pull the plug, thereby saving Livi—and by extension Amelia—from becoming barbecue. And maybe it was because he'd been laughing just before that, or maybe it was because he'd known it was coming, but he didn't even get upset when Ty said they'd called Nick to come pick them up in the _Fiddler._

That didn't last, however.

“Whoa, wait, hold up,” Digger said, raising a hand, palm outward. “You asked _Nick_ about that?”

“I would draw your attention to what I said earlier, about doing really stupid things when I get scared and angry,” Zane said quietly. “I know it was a bad idea, and on some level I probably knew it when I asked him, but it sort of...slipped out. I'd already mostly figured it out anyway. I—honestly, I just expected him to say yes or no and leave it at that. I sure as hell didn't expect him to start telling me the whole story—”

“He did _what?_ ” Owen and Kelly said in unison, Owen incredulous and Kelly irrationally pissed again. Nick hadn't even told _him_ what they'd gone through, not really. The first time he'd heard about it had been when Nick had been knocked out on a mission and destroyed the med bay when they tried to sedate him; Ty'd told them a little bit about what they'd gone through then, and Nick had been embarrassed and tried not to think about it. For him to tell Zane about it—a guy he'd only met once before, barely knew, and probably had every reason to hate—was unthinkable.

Zane flinched, but rallied and spoke before Ty could cut in. “I think—and I could be wrong, but from what I know about Nick, I don't think I am—I think he saw telling me as some kind of penance or something like that. We were both kind of jealous of the other at the time, trying to figure out where we stood with one another knowing what we knew and how the other felt. But the more I got to know him, the more I realized he isn't the kind of guy who'd make a move on someone else's boyfriend—or girlfriend—under ordinary circumstances. Maybe he thought telling me about what happened would, I don't know, absolve him somehow. Maybe I should have stopped him after he told me how long it had been, but...I think it did both of us good for him to tell the whole thing. Even if it didn't seem like that at the time.”

The analysis of Nick's character took Kelly's breath away. Because, fuck, Zane was right. Nick was such a self-sacrificing asshole he _would_ keep throwing himself on the fire if he thought it would absolve him of the tiniest bit of the guilt he'd carried around for his whole life. And it probably _had_ been good for him to get the whole story out—and Zane had probably needed to hear it, from someone other than Ty. Knowing that something like that had happened to someone you loved was bad enough. Hearing it directly from them, and knowing there was nothing you could do to take that memory away from them, was worse.

“Yeah, that sounds like Irish all right,” Digger muttered. “That, and he doesn't do shit halfway. You either get everything or nothing.”

“He also doesn't—” Owen paused, blinking hard. “ _Didn't_ want people to suffer if they didn't have to. He probably figured, if you already knew as much as you did...better not to let you spend too much time trying to imagine it. You'd either make things worse in your head than they were...”

“Or better,” Ty completed softly. “And then it would've been worse when you did finally ask me.”

Zane squeezed Ty's fingers again, and after a minute, he continued with the story, but for just a moment, there was a buzzing noise in Kelly's ears and he couldn't quite concentrate. Until Owen had corrected himself, it hadn't even occurred to him that they were all still talking about Nick in the present tense. Like he was still there.

Zane's imitation of Cross and Ty's argument did, at least, break Kelly a little bit out of his numbness as the others began chuckling, and he found himself on the edge of his seat as the two of them described their chase through D.C. Digger and Owen ragged on Ty mercilessly about having slept with Preston, but Kelly was still stuck back on the revelations from the office.

“Wait, so you're telling me _both_ of your creepy pseudo-uncles were turning their respective agencies into a hit service and using you to do it?” he finally broke in.

“Yeah, Dad was real thrilled when he found that out,” Ty said, his face twisting up in a grimace. “Although to be fair, Jonas really didn't know I was involved in that one, and I don't think I'd ever actually run any jobs for him before. I think they were just...running similar schemes parallel to each other and they happened to overlap.”

“Makes you wonder why Burns was so pissed off,” Owen said. “If they were doing the same thing.”

Zane shrugged. “Probably because Jonas didn't trust him enough to tell him what he was doing. I mean, from everything we've learned since, Burns would've probably been one hundred percent on board with it if Jonas had just been upfront with him from the beginning. But because Jonas tried to pull one over on him, Burns got on his high horse.”

“I don't know that it was just that,” Ty said slowly. “I—I think Dick _had_ to react that way then, because he didn't want me to figure out that what he was doing wasn't...”

“Legal?” Digger suggested. “Would that have stopped you?”

“Maybe not. But remember, I was also supposed to have Zane under surveillance at the time. If Dick had gone along with what Randy was doing, if he'd ordered me to leave Cross there or stand aside and let him be shot, if he'd tipped his hand that he was on board with it...well, I might have figured out a hell of a lot sooner that he was essentially doing the same thing, with Zane as the endgame.” Ty's voice broke slightly.

Zane abandoned all pretense and wrapped his arm around Ty, practically pulling him onto his lap as Ty closed his eyes tightly, evidently fighting back his emotions. For the first time since they'd all gathered at Arlington—for the first time since his nightmare—Kelly didn't feel bitter or jealous. This wasn't romantic...well, it was, but not the kind of romance Kelly missed. This was Zane bringing Ty back from the edge of a nightmare, something they'd all done for one another a thousand times. And Kelly had to admit that that was one hell of a nightmare. Not just the idea that Burns had been setting Zane up to be arrested or killed, but that he'd been using Ty to do it. That Ty might have been the one to have to place the cuffs on his husband, or pull the trigger.

Zane pressed a gentle kiss to the top of Ty's head, then turned back to the others and resumed the story. It took a little while for Ty to join back in, but eventually he relaxed and opened his eyes and seemed almost his normal self, although he didn't leave the circle of Zane's arms.

“And that's the story of the Road Trip from Hell,” Zane concluded.

Kelly snorted. “Is that why you don't use the word vacation?”

Ty hissed and made one of the gestures Digger sometimes used to ward off evil spirits. Zane chuckled. “Uh, no, that relates to the mountains of West Virginia, which is a story for another night, because I think we're all exhausted. Or at least I am.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Ty said quickly.

Owen glanced at his watch and snorted. “Jesus, when did we get so fucking old?”

Kelly bit his tongue to keep himself from answering, but he thought bitterly, _End of February._

*~*~*~*~*

Kelly knew, as soon as he woke up the next morning, that he was going to be the last one out of bed. Not because everyone else was already stirring and prodding at him, but because he'd somehow wound up at the bottom of the heap.

Well. There were probably worse ways to go.

He shifted slightly to get Digger's nose out of his asscrack, considered rolling over but decided Digger wouldn't appreciate waking up with _that_ in his face, and folded his arms under his chin, staring vacantly at the headboard. He'd slept better than he'd expected, probably because of the presence and weight of his brothers on top of him. Even Zane wasn't necessarily unwelcome. At least Kelly wasn't alone.

And he had to admit, Digger had been right. All of them piling on top of the bed like this made it less obvious they were missing someone. When they were so tangled up it was hard to tell where one of them ended and where the next one began, there wasn't really _space_ to notice an absence. There was the nebulous Them, rather than individuals.

Of course, now that he was _awake,_ he couldn't help but feel Nick's absence like a phantom limb. He thought about the time in Scotland when he, Ty, and Nick had told the story of Nick's drunken Vegas marriage, and wondered how Nick would have contributed to the story of the cross-country road trip. What he would have said about why in the name of God's green earth he'd told Zane about his and Ty's time as prisoners.

“Damn you, Nick,” he whispered, feeling a lump rising in his throat.

Because everything they'd said about him yesterday had been right. Nick was brave and self-sacrificing and stubborn as hell. He had a warped sense of humor and would have been royally pissed that Eli wanted to watch him complain about the suitcase demon and probably would have hated this hotel as much as Owen had. And he was _gone,_ and Kelly had lost his chance at forever, and he wasn't sure what to make of it.

Nick had proposed once. He'd been in the hospital, having just donated a piece of his liver to the piece of shit who hadn't even managed to make anything out of his only son's sacrifice, and Kelly had wondered aloud what words he could use for the feelings inside him if he'd already used _I love you,_ and Nick had asked him to marry him. And then he hadn't brought it up again, and Kelly'd thought he'd forgotten, that he'd just been high on painkillers, and so he'd waited. He'd known they were in it for the long haul, they'd sort of talked about that, so even if they never actually made it legal, Kelly had thought he was okay with waiting.

And then Nick had confessed that he _had_ remembered, that he'd let Kelly think he hadn't because Liam Bell had threatened his life to get Nick to cooperate with him, and Kelly had been so _angry_ he hadn't known what to do with himself. Not at Liam, although he wished he had been, because now he felt guilty as hell about the fact that he'd been angry at Nick instead. They were supposed to be equal partners, like Ty and Zane were, and Nick had seen the aftereffects of lying to protect one's boyfriend. And besides that, Kelly wasn't some delicate flower who needed to be protected; he was capable of handling himself. The fact that Nick had tried to shield him made him angry. As did the fact that he'd thought he had to handle it alone.

He had to admit he'd been unfair to be angry. Nick had always acted on an almost desperate instinct to protect the people he loved. It was one of the things Kelly loved about him, really. But at the same time, he'd wished Nick had trusted him enough to give him a choice in the matter. Not just about helping Liam, either, but about killing Burns. He'd thought he had to fool Kelly, when Kelly honestly wouldn't have batted an eyelash. And he _knew_ he could have helped ease the burden on Nick's soul. Hell, if Nick had told him what he was supposed to do, Kelly would have handled it for him.

Nick had once confessed to Kelly, long before they'd been fucking, that his greatest fear was of losing himself to the darkness he'd been born of, that he'd spent every day of his life trying to pull himself free of. Kelly had never been able to convince him that he shone so brightly darkness didn't stand a chance. He'd have torn Richard Burns' throat out with his bare hands rather than let Nick think he was a bad person for doing what he'd had to do. What needed to be done.

Instead, Nick had probably died thinking he was too far gone to save. In spite of everything they'd _all_ done to convince him otherwise.

Kelly buried his face in his arms, wishing he could cry. He _needed_ to cry. The alternative, with him, was usually to start screaming and rampaging and breaking things, and that was a lot harder to do from underneath a pile of other bodies.

He wondered what they would have talked about the night before if Nick had lived and still been with them. Would they have still shared one room, or split into two rooms—or even three? Two would have probably been sensible, since it would have meant that Owen and Digger could have been pressed into being chaperons, although Kelly was honest enough about himself to admit that it probably wouldn't have stopped him. More likely they'd have gotten three rooms, and he'd have been able to spend the night with Nick. Alone.

Despite his best efforts to keep from thinking about it, Kelly's mind wandered down the path of things he and Nick could have done to one another the night before. And if they didn't bring the camera, who would have known?

The sudden loud blast of music from someone's phone startled Kelly, making him jerk up without conscious thought, only to drop back down immediately as his spine banged against someone's jaw. Someone yelped, and some of the weight lifted off of Kelly to be followed almost immediately by the thud of a body hitting the floor.

“What the fuck?” Zane's voice was rough with sleep. “Who set an alarm?”

An alarm? Kelly's heart rate gradually slowed back to normal as Digger said, “Not me, man.”

“Ow,” Ty muttered, sounding pitiful.

Kelly managed to get himself up. Ty had been the one to fall out of bed, and Zane was now kneeling next to him, a mother hen-type look on his face as he carefully checked him over. Owen rubbed his chin absently as he reached for the pile of phones for the one playing a song Kelly vaguely remembered Eli listening to when they'd all lived in Jacksonville together. He wondered who'd decided that would make a good alarm.

“Doc, what the _hell._ ” Owen waved Kelly's phone at him just as the music stopped. “Who sets a goddamn alarm for seven-thirteen in the morning?”

Kelly blinked. That was _his_ phone? “I haven't—I can't remember the last time I put an alarm on my phone. I don't even _have_ that song on my phone.”

“Pandora?” Zane suggested.

“Yeah, but I didn't have Pandora open yesterday. You did.”

Ty rubbed his chest for a moment. “Anybody else think that sounded like the kind of stuff Eli used to play?”

Kelly pinched the bridge of his nose as it hit him. “He said he'd haunt our asses if we didn't follow the rules.”

“Yeah, but we are following the rules.” Digger narrowed his eyes at Ty and Zane. “Right?”

Zane held up both hands, as if in surrender. “Wasn't us. We were just sleeping.”

Ty mumbled something about medication and equipment that Kelly didn't quite catch. Owen shook his head. “Would've been one of their phones Eli possessed if it was them, right? Doc?”

“Not like I could've done anything,” Kelly muttered. “I just had _thoughts._ ”

“Don't share them, please.”

Kelly got out of bed, but he was only barely aware of the others talking as he stared at the pile of phones plugged into their chargers.

Eli was along for the ride. Was Nick?

**Author's Note:**

> Come join us in the [Cut & Run Discord server](https://discord.gg/zW4ndcm) to flail about our beloved disasters.


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